


Orogenesis

by Dracoduceus



Series: Smooth River Stones [4]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Canonical brainwashing, M/M, Past Relationship(s), discussion of loss of self
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:27:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28460886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dracoduceus/pseuds/Dracoduceus
Summary: Widowmaker wonders. She decides that some things are better left unquestioned.
Series: Smooth River Stones [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1619776
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	Orogenesis

**Author's Note:**

> This is a bridge between the Epilogue of Disaggregation (Arc 2) and the next Arc, currently named Monadnock. (Again, referring to mountain-building because I am a nerd and I sometimes very aggressively stick to a theme.) 
> 
> “The word orogenesis means ‘birth of mountains’ (Greek, oros, a mountain and genesis, be produced, creation). From this we get orogen, which is a term for the characteristically long, narrow linear or curvilinear mountain belts, whether or not they have a marked topographic expression.”  
> Johnson, Michael Raymond Walter., and Simon Harley. Orogenesis: The Making of Mountains, Cambridge, 2012, pp. vii-vii.

The problem was that the story that was told was one of love and betrayal. A romantic tragedy.

They assumed that whatever part of Amélie remained was horrified about what she had done, or would be if she had any understanding of what had taken place. They thought of Amélie as a dancer, an innocent civilian and not a soldier in her own right.

Thing was, Widowmaker knew exactly who Amélie was—and who Gérard was.

If anyone would have asked Amélie, she would have told them everything. Or maybe she wouldn’t—she was from old blood, who buried their problems under a shining veneer of a perfect life. Likely, Widowmaker sometimes thought, she would smile and pretend that everything was fine while everyone else ignored the signs.

The problem, Amélie’s ghost whispered to Widowmaker at night, was that Gérard did not understand _passion_.

It was not that he wasn’t passionate, or didn’t have passion—that was the worst part. He was passionate about work, passionate about almost every living thing he came across (except children, which suited Amélie just fine), passionate about his work with Overwatch, _passionately in love with Amélie._

There had never been a doubt in her mind that he was enamored with her and not for one second did she ever doubt that he loved her beyond all reason. He always brought her enough roses to fill a garden—once had even commissioned a great blanket of roses that he draped over her exhausted shoulders after a performance. She had been the envy of every other woman there for all she was ready to collapse beneath its weight.

Gérard was wildly, passionately, in love with Amélie and yet he had little interest in learning anything about her. He knew that she loved him—of course she did, he was Gérard Lacroix!—but how often had he begged her to stop dancing?

_Why must you do this?_ he would ask as she came home late from practice, aching and sweaty. _Why must my love suffer so much? You do not need to work—I can support us both!_

Yet it did not ever occur to him that even if they had never married, she could live a comfortable, work-free life on her own. Her family came from old money—her dancing was a passion, a challenge in her otherwise challenge-free life.

And he did not understand that.

Widowmaker thought that Amélie had to have tried to explain it to him. What she knew of the woman told her that she wasn’t some wallflower to be pushed around. She imagined that Amélie had told him, time and again.

But then, she knew that the man was stubborn. She imagined that Gérard had been the type to not take “no” for an answer, or if he would, he would take it with ill grace.

Even without Amélie’s memories, Widowmaker knew this: she still remembered the briefings about him, about his character and his habits. After all, though it had been Amélie that had first been brought through the Dollhouse doors, it had been Widowmaker that had left; it had been Widowmaker to curl up next to him in bed as if nothing was amiss.

It had been Widowmaker that lived the lie of a marriage for months until she killed Gérard. She had been through the briefings, had compared the notes to the grainy images that were left of Amélie’s entire life and the whispers that may have been her ghost.

But then, she hadn’t been a “hot ticket item” (Sombra’s words) the way that Cyberninja was, so the Dollhouse technicians never cared too much if they erased the memories of her briefings.

Widowmaker supposed that it didn’t really matter, when it came down to it. Amélie had given in to the process, when all was said and done. She hadn’t truly given her consent, hadn’t agreed to the process, but what parts of her still lingered in Widowmaker—like a benign ghost in the house where they died—wasn’t too upset by his death.

Sometimes Widowmaker wondered what it would be like if Amélie truly was upset. She knew Amélie better than anyone, except perhaps Amélie herself, but the ghostly echoes of a dead woman seemed…content. Widowmaker knew that she had been told what would happen to Gérard—that she would be the instrument of his death, even if it wasn’t “her” in control of her own body. She had been horrified—Widowmaker could still feel the distant echoes of her fear and horror—but…they didn’t linger.

It was what Widowmaker thought a phantom pain might be like, the imaginary pain that some amputees experienced in limbs that were no longer there. She felt a pain that wasn’t there—or perhaps a memory of a pain whose edges had dulled their bite.

Make no mistake, Widowmaker would say if anyone had asked, Amélie knew exactly what had happened, or what would happen as she lay there on the sterile medical bed in the Dollhouse. She just…didn’t care.

Widowmaker wondered if this was what having an imaginary friend was like. She had seen children talk about it, heard others discuss it. These “friends” would be only visible to a child, would only have life through their imaginations. Amélie was a real person, but were these memories just her own interpretation of what she wanted to happen? Was she the architect, the screenwriter of an imaginary life of a former prima ballerina that had murdered her husband?

Widowmaker blinked, a thousand years passing in the blink of an eye. Sombra was making mischief at her desk. The Reaper was present somewhere—though she couldn’t see him she could smell him. She couldn’t say exactly how she could or exactly what he smelled like—Sombra didn’t seem to be able to smell him—but she did. She could.

“What did they do to you?” The Reaper asked from somewhere beside her. “Have you returned?”

He always asked that, but she knew that he wasn’t asking after Amélie, asking if her programming had broken. Somehow, he knew exactly what was going on in her mind as if he was there as well—and he knew that she had been lost in the web of truths and lies and Widowmaker and Amélie Lacroix, née Guillard.

“I am back,” she said simply. Then, perhaps too boldly, she asked, “Why did Amélie not get a divorce?”

The Reaper grunted. “It was improper. In the circles she traveled, it was scandalous. But then, so was marrying Gérard. Near the end, I think she realized that and had begun the process.”

She stared up at the ceiling and wished that she could ask Amélie for sure. But then, it didn’t really matter. Amélie—and Gérard—were dead, and Widowmaker was all that remained.

Slowly, she sat up, and felt every movement of her body that moved independently of her own actions. A body knew the actions of a lifetime and she could feel it in the way that she moved, pointing her toes, crossing her legs at the ankle, in the way she rolled her shoulders back and sat up straight with her chin up and her hands folded neatly in her lap.

Sombra was looking at her, not quite seeing her but still watching nonetheless. Her many screens, formed by hexagonal pixels—which, in some cases, were screens themselves—zipping through lines of code and sparkling vertical cipher and videos at a speed that seemed too fast for the human eye.

Too fast for even her own augmented eyes.

But she knew that Sombra saw everything. It was hardwired directly into her—the visual in front of her was more for the animal need to see, to see something right in front of her even as she worked through it in her augmented systems.

Then Sombra blinked and there was some indiscernible change that heralded her return to her physical body. She smirked, her painted lips poisonous with her particular brand of mischief.

Widowmaker was surprised at how much she enjoyed watching that smile. She enjoyed it about as much as she liked listening to the groaning and crackling of The Reaper as he relaxed—as much as he ever relaxed—with them on Sombra’s old, lumpy couch.

The shadows were extra dark along the floor at the base of the couch, as if The Reaper was hiding under it. Like a damn cat, Sombra liked to say. Widowmaker wondered if Amélie had such creatures, or if she liked them at all. A four-legged creature with knives for paws didn’t seem like a good companion animal for anyone, but according to Sombra, people liked them.

But Sombra also claimed that some of her favorite shoes, which covered each toe in a way that made Widowmaker uncomfortable in some indescribable way, were high fashion.

Slowly, The Reaper’s form took shape. She used to wonder how much of him were nanites, but after watching his form slowly appear from a puddle of boiling ink, she stopped asking. Whatever process he used to do such unsettling things also transferred his clothes, so she supposed that they should at least be grateful for that.

“Why have you called us here, Sombra?” The Reaper asked in his low, grating voice. He sat on the couch beside Widowmaker but the cushions didn’t bend beneath his weight.

There were a lot of very unsettling things about The Reaper, but Widowmaker didn’t mind him. Technically speaking, he was her handler, so she wasn’t _meant_ to be unsettled by him, but she made it a point to not tell the Dollhouse technicians when she operated outside of her programming. That would just mean that her programming would have to be more closely examined, which was a painful experience.

Worse was knowing that if she showed any sign that she was in pain, she would be more closely examined—and the pain would only get worse. It had happened once—just once, because she vowed to never let it happen again.

Sombra’s violet lips curled into a wicked smile. “I found something interesting,” she said, as if none of them had noticed that Widowmaker had briefly drifted off.

“What kind of ‘interesting’?” The Reaper asked. “The _last_ time was—”

Widowmaker kept her eyes on Sombra so she could watch for the spark of mischief there. Sombra didn’t disappoint and flapped a hand. “Yes, but it _was_ an interesting fact, wasn’t it?”

With a sound like a rattling doorknob, The Reaper sighed. “What do you want, Sombra?”

Something must really have caught her attention because Sombra bounced in her chair before “turning” her hardlight monitor toward them. She tapped the air a few times and lines of writing appeared.

Widowmaker frowned and looked closer. “Technical specifications?” she asked.

“For an old combustion-hybrid single-man plane,” Sombra said gleefully. “ _Ancient_ stuff.”

The Reaper grunted. “So?” he asked. “And they’re not _that_ old.”

“Just because they happened within _your_ lifetime doesn’t make them old,” Sombra told him. “And that doesn’t mean that _you_ aren’t old.” She gestured and photos appeared on the translucent screens. “More than that, it’s a single-passenger plane—”

“You already said that,” The Reaper said impatiently. He crossed his arms over his big chest like a sulky child.

“Yes,” Sombra drawled. “But don’t you want to know who’s in it?”

It was a little-known fact that The Reaper was very…curious. He always wanted to know everything—a fact that Sombra always teased him for. They both always needed to _know_. For The Reaper it was because a part of him, whatever once used to be Gabriel Reyes, Commander of Blackwatch, needed to know to plan ops; for Sombra, it was because information and secrets were her currency, her lifeblood.

In comparison, Widowmaker didn’t need to know anything except who to kill, where to stand, who to follow. She didn’t feel a compulsive _need_ to find out anything, didn’t feel frustrated or curious if someone denied her knowledge.

It was kind of refreshing to be around them. She couldn’t describe it well; though she didn’t feel _curious_ , she enjoyed knowing. When they shared secrets—never their own—it filled something in her that she never knew was empty. The knowledge was often useless to her specifically as they were mostly tidbits of information on coups and rebellions and corrupt officials, but it was nice to simply _know_.

Without looking, she knew that The Reaper tensed up, trying to hide how interested he was in the information. That was why Sombra had dangled the lure for him the way she had: they all knew that he would act like a hunting hound that had caught scent of his prey.

She paused. Widowmaker had never had a hunting hound; _her_ hunting had human prey, not animals, and she didn’t need the assistance of a beast. Did Amélie have hunting hounds? Did she go hunting? Or had her rich family done so?

As she asked herself these questions, she realized that she had a hint of that curiosity too, but only when it came to Amélie. She wanted to know and yet she already knew. Amélie’s history was an open book for her but some information was redacted. She may have the most intimate knowledge of Amélie’s history with Gérard and how she felt and the many memories, good and bad, of their marriage, but she didn’t know everything.

Amélie, simply by being human and not a Doll, was an enigma to Widowmaker. Her _humanity_ was something that was alien, the idea of youthful experiences that still shaped her. Widowmaker had been designed and existed; there was no “growing up” for her.

She blinked and realized that Sombra and The Reaper were looking at her. Sombra was giddy with excitement, wiggling like a child as she waited for Widowmaker to reconnect.

“Are you okay?” The Reaper asked gruffly.

“She is functional,” Widowmaker said perfunctorily. The Reaper snorted and she corrected herself, “I am fine.”

The Reaper turned to Sombra. “Well?”

Still bouncing like an excited child, Sombra tapped the air and produced a grainy satellite image of the landed plane and a figure was shown unloading. They quickly carried everything away from the site and they watched in silence as the feed changed to an overhead map showing the location of the passenger and the location of the wreckage, including a note when it detonated.

“And this helps _because…?_ ” The Reaper asked too-patiently.

Sombra snorted. “Oh, please,” she said. “Haven’t you heard of _building anticipation?_ ”

“I had simply thought that you didn’t have the information,” The Reaper drawled. “And wanted us here to feel a false sense of power.”

“That I can control you with your curiosity?” Sombra asked. “Yeah. I can and I did; and I _do_ have the information.” She gestured grandly and the satellite feed rewound and reangled. The pixels obscuring the person’s identity began to shrink, breaking into smaller and smaller pieces. It reminded Widowmaker of bubbles in the water. Large ones giving way to smaller and smaller bubbles until they disappeared.

She immediately recognized the man in the picture even though she hadn’t interacted with him very much: Jesse McCree, handler of Cyberninja.

_Ex_ -handler, because at some point he and Cyberninja had gone MIA on a mission together. Talon had been _furious_ —a lot of work went into every Doll—and had searched for their bodies. It had taken them an embarrassingly long time to realize that they weren’t actually dead, that Jesse McCree had run off to Overwatch with Cyberninja in tow.

Partially through what she assumed was Sombra’s own machinations, it had taken Talon an embarrassingly long time to find them and to launch a recovery mission. The Dollhouse technicians didn’t need any help in delaying the process even more—they insisted, vehemently, that Cyberninja needed to be recovered _carefully_ or all of their work would be ruined.

It had failed and Widowmaker still remembered the electric heat on her heels from Hanzo’s dragons, wielded through Cyberninja’s rage.

She wondered what happened to Cyberninja after that. Had Hanzo’s dragons consumed it? Was it still functioning?

Beside her, The Reaper’s talons dug into the couch, gouging out chunks of the worn cloth. Sombra clicked her tongue as oblivious in the wake of his fury, The Reaper stared at the image of Jesse McCree. “ _Ingrate_ ,” he snarled. “Sombra—”

“I can never tell if he wants to rub his fist in his hair and say ‘atta boy’ or if he wants to murder him,” Sombra whispered loudly to Widowmaker. Her eyes went comically wide as if she just realized that The Reaper could hear her. “Oh hey. You’re here. What is it, _Gabriel?_ What do you need?”

Widowmaker thought that The Reaper must have been really angry because he ignored her teasing. “Suit up,” he ordered Widowmaker shortly. “Sombra, submit a flight plan to my attention. We’ll be wheels up in an hour.”

“That’s all I have?” Sombra pretended to pout as Widowmaker got to her feet.

“You’ve already done it,” The Reaper growled as he stalked to the door. “Send it to my attention; I’m going to speak to Maximilien.”

“Maximilien?” Widowmaker asked before she could stop herself. “Not Doomfist?”

She thought that The Reaper smiled at her; this imagined smile, invisible behind his bony mask, was not pleasant. “Maximilien,” he said, his voice a low, dangerous purr. “For debts to be repaid.”

As The Reaper left—sliding _under_ the door rather than going _through_ it—Sombra clicked her tongue disapprovingly. “So dramatic,” she said, rolling her eyes. She winked at Widowmaker. “You go and get dressed; meet up at Hangar 2.”

Then, before Widowmaker’s eyes, she disappeared in a flash of her signature hexagonal pixels.

Because _of course_ she would.

Amused despite herself, Widowmaker stretched and went to the locker she kept in the corner of the room. Pulling out her gun was like greeting an old friend—one as familiar as Amélie’s ghost.

“Go to sleep,” she whispered to Amélie, though the woman no longer truly existed. “You won’t want to see this.” Quickly, she suited up and looked at herself in the cracked mirror set in the little locker.

Shaking her head, she turned and left, marching purposefully toward Hangar 2.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what to tell you. Come and yell at me on Twitter at [Dracoduceus](https://twitter.com/dracoduceus). :P
> 
> ~DC


End file.
